Watch Grass Valley officer grab man before jumping off bridge

Grass Valley police officers on Tuesday, June 20, 2017, encountered afternoon a young man contemplating ending his life by jumping off a Highway 49 overpass. Officers arrived and spoke with him for several minutes, trying to get him to reconsider.

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Grass Valley police officers on Tuesday, June 20, 2017, encountered afternoon a young man contemplating ending his life by jumping off a Highway 49 overpass. Officers arrived and spoke with him for several minutes, trying to get him to reconsider.

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Two Grass Valley police officers stopped a young man from jumping off an overpass onto the highway.

The two officers, whose actions were caught on a body camera, first tried to calm the distraught man. They kept their distance Tuesday afternoon on the overpass over Highway 49 as they tried to reason with the shirtless, tattooed man.

One officer asked, “Why don’t you try to tell me what is going on first? We will start there. I don’t have to touch you or nothing. I just want to talk, man. All right?”

However, the man started to climb the fence along the top of overpass, appearing to be on his way to jumping onto the highway.

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With some effort, the officers were able to pull him from the chain-link overpass fence. He was handcuffed for his own safety.

“I didn’t do nothing wrong,” the man told the officers.

To which the officer replied as the man was led to an air-conditioned patrol car, “I don’t want you to jump. I don’t want you to do it. Let’s go over where it is nice and cold and we will talk.”

The man was taken for help, according to the the Police Department’s Facebook page:

“By reacting quickly, the officers were able to prevent a horrible tragedy and get the young man the crisis intervention services he needed. They also protected the motoring public from the possibility of serious traffic accident risks.”